


haunted

by inkin_brushes



Series: Immortals (Vamp AU) [48]
Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-05-27 11:45:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkin_brushes/pseuds/inkin_brushes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’d focused so much on sorting out Jaehwan’s injuries even though Sanghyuk had his own, and it had all been left to poison him too. And he was succumbing to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sanghyuk parked his car a block away from HQ. Not for any security reason, but rather because there was no space anywhere closer. He cut the engine and then scrubbed at his face, wondering how the night could only be just beginning when he already felt like climbing into bed and sleeping.   
  
But sleep these last few nights was proving to be a restless experience.   
  
He felt his mouth set into a grim line and then he stepped out of the car, the shock of cold air feeling a slap in the face. When he sighed, his breath came out in a visible puff, and he pulled his scarf up to cover the lower half of his face before tucking his hands into his coat pockets.  
  
The townhouse HQ used as a cover was in sight when Sanghyuk heard a soft scuffle to his right, and then he was being touched on his upper arm, and he yelped and jumped, but it was just Sungjae looping his arm through Sanghyuk’s. Sungjae didn’t let Sanghyuk jump far, and smirked up at him when Sanghyuk swore.   
  
“You’re the worst,” Sanghyuk said, and Sungjae just leaned against him.  
  
“You looked cold,” he said sweetly. He peered up at Sanghyuk’s face, leaning in. “And now that I am close I can see you look like shit as well. Cold shit.”   
  
Sanghyuk put his hand on Sungjae’s face and shoved him away. “I’m tired.”  
  
“And mean,” Sungjae whined. He’d stumbled back but caught up to Sanghyuk again with ease, and the two of them went up the stairs into the town house, then through to door of the coat closet and down into HQ.  
  
“Are you patrolling tonight?” Sanghyuk asked.  
  
“Yeah, with Ilhoon,” Sungjae said.  
  
“Where’s Hyunsik?”   
  
“Home,” Sungjae said, frowning for the first time. “He’s called out since the incident a few nights ago.”  
  
Sanghyuk’s stomach swooped with worry and guilt. “Is he okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sungjae replied, “just out of sorts, I think—”  
  
He cut off when they walked into the main office floor with all the desks, and found it uncommonly crowded. “Whoa,” Sanghyuk said, stopping.  
  
“Sungjae! Sanghyuk!” Ilhoon called from his desk across the room. He beckoned them over, and it took them a few moments of weaving through chairs and desks and chatting people to get to his side.   
  
“What’s going on?” Sanghyuk asked. Sungjae was staring around owlishly. “Why hasn’t anyone gone out for their shifts?”  
  
“Kris has called a meeting, no one knows what’s going on,” Ilhoon said, giving a one shouldered shrug. “Something happened last night, apparently, but I don’t know what.”  
  
Last night. Last night was when Sanghyuk and Jaehwan had said their goodbyes. Surely Jaehwan hadn’t done anything foolish, surely, surely, he’d _promised_ —  
  
“There he is,” Sungjae said, and Sanghyuk turned to see Kris coming through the door, looking more severe than usual. A hush fell over everyone in the room as they all turned to look at him, waiting for him to speak.  
  
“I’m sorry to have delayed all your shifts, but something has happened that you all need to be informed about,” Kris said, loudly so he could be heard throughout the room. The last of the whispering died off as he spoke. “They’re keeping this out of the papers to avoid potential panic, but last night a VCF officer was attacked and killed by what we are assuming right now to be a vampire, as the cause of death was draining.”  
  
Sanghyuk frowned. That wasn’t something necessarily noteworthy. It did happen, sometimes. All it meant for them was there was a vampire sharp enough out there to get the drop on a VCF officer.   
  
“Just the one?” Eunkwang was asking. “Where was his partner?”  
  
“He didn’t have one, because he wasn’t on foot patrol, he was in a car when it happened,” Kris said grimly, and it all made sense to Sanghyuk then. Everyone around him, too, seemed to realize the weight of that at the same time. Vehicles all had warding on them, as was the law, and the average citizen’s minivan wouldn’t have potent enough spellwork to deter a truly determined supe, but VCF patrol cars did. Or should.   
  
“What happened, exactly?” This was spoken softly, and from Yixing.  
  
“They’re not entirely sure. It looks like the officer was doing his patrol and the vamp smashed through his window and dragged him out,” Kris said.  
  
“That sounds personal,” Sanghyuk said. “Was he high ranking?”  
  
Kris shook his head. “No. But it is possible it was a personal attack, the officer had a kill record, though it was short. We cannot be sure though, and I don’t think I have to tell you all how worrisome this is if it _wasn’t_ a personal attack. This wasn’t a civilian killed for blood, this was a very deliberate— all I can call it is a hit.”  
  
“Could a nest have just moved in and is establishing its territory?” Ilhoon said.  
  
“Again, it is possible, but you know as well as I that we’ve not seen any indication of that sort of activity.” Kris was looking carefully from face to face. “It is possible this was a one time incident, but it is also possible it was not. It might be a vampire going after vampire hunters. Since it is not something that the public will be hearing about I wanted to inform you, and stress vigilance. I know that on patrol it can be easy to slip into a more lax attitude, but when dealing with this sort of vamp, that can very quickly mean death.”   
  
Sanghyuk got chills and beside him Sungjae looked unusually somber. Ilhoon was worrying one of his lip piercings between his teeth.   
  
When Kris spoke again it was softer. “I’ll let you go out on your shifts now, but again: please be careful and watch one another’s backs.” He turned to leave, and was followed by a few people who presumably had more questions for him.  
  
Sanghyuk exhaled shakily and rubbed at the goosebumps on his arms. Sungjae was looking at him with his pretty, dark eyes. “Sanghyuk,” he said softly. “Can you team up with us at least for a time? Between this and that thing that was running around killing vamps, I— you shouldn’t be patrolling solo.”  
  
Ilhoon looked away and Sanghyuk got that sick, twisty feeling in his stomach, the one that always settled there when he had to lie to his friends. “I don’t think it would make much difference,” Sanghyuk said, gently curling his hand around Sungjae’s upper arm. “A vamp that managed to break into a VCF officer’s car— well, I think if it wanted to kill me, it’d find a way, even if you were there.”  
  
Sungjae’s face twisted. “I guess.”  
  
Ilhoon moved, stepping beyond them. “I need water,” he mumbled, and then shot Sanghyuk a speaking glance.  
  
Sanghyuk sighed, so Ilhoon would know he’d understood, before turning to Sungjae. “I promise I’ll be careful,” he said gently, and Sungjae looked away. “I can’t promise more than that. You know what this job is. You know what we signed up for.” He was saying the words but they rang hollow even to his own ears. Sanghyuk was beginning to realize that maybe he hadn’t signed up for exactly what he was getting.   
  
“Yeah, it’s just— you’re doing it so much more dangerously than the rest of us,” Sungjae said softly. “I know I don’t have to tell you how upset I’d be if— if anything happened to you.”  
  
Sanghyuk found a lump rising in his throat. He’d known his death would cut Jaehwan deeply, but he hadn’t really realized the ripples it would make amongst his other friends. He wasn’t going to be there to see the aftermath, after all. But the look in Sungjae’s eyes right then was giving Sanghyuk glimpses he didn’t want to face.   
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk murmured. He gave Sungjae a weak smile. “I need to go; I have been summoned to the water cooler by his majesty Ilhoon.”  
  
That made Sungjae chuckle a little. “Yeah, go, before he gets cranky.”   
  
Sanghyuk followed Ilhoon’s path to the corner of the room. Ilhoon was leaned up against the water cooler, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re not subtle,” Sanghyuk murmured, grabbing a paper cup to get himself a drink. He flicked a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one else was in hearing distance before filling his cup with icy water.  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said, soft but intent, “this wasn’t Jaehwan right?”  
  
Sanghyuk straightened, looking down into the little bit of water he’d retrieved. “I can’t say for certain, obviously, but— I am almost a hundred percent sure it wasn’t him,” he said. “He has no reason and he isn’t the— the sort to go after hunters.” He looked up to see Ilhoon raising his eyebrows and he amended, “Well, except for you, apparently. But you’re connected to me; the VCF officer was not.”  
  
Ilhoon grunted. “You still owe me an explanation for that, at some point,” he said, adding in a hard voice, “some point _soon_.”  
  
Sanghyuk almost quivered in his boots, but opted to take a sip of his water instead, to calm his nerves. He felt a bit jittery, mostly from this new information they had. At least it wasn’t Jaehwan. At least that part of Sanghyuk was safe.  
  
Ilhoon seemed to pick up on his unease. “You don’t seem well, Sanghyuk,” he said. “You didn’t look good even when you first walked in, but now— you’re allowed to call off, you know.”  
  
Sanghyuk shook his head. “I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now,” he whispered. “I’ve been— having trouble, lately. With all the things running through my head.”  
  
“Because of my prediction?” Ilhoon asked, almost too soft to be heard. “I’m sorry, Sanghyuk.”  
  
It wasn’t just the prediction, but that was part of it. Sanghyuk was afraid, beginning to feel the ticking of the clock, but it was more than that. He dreaded it because he knew it could cause Jaehwan intense agony, and he didn’t know why he cared so much. Or rather, he was worried he did know, and he just couldn’t face it. He was so frightened, on so many fronts.  
  
Ilhoon was looking at him, so Sanghyuk shook his head again. “It’s not your fault,” he said, biting his bottom lip for a moment before he had the courage to ask, “Ilhoon is this— is this the vampire that kills me?”  
  
For a moment, a short flicker, Ilhoon looked incredibly sad. “I don’t know, Sanghyuk,” he said. “I don’t know.”  
  
——  
  
Jaehwan woke late. He wasn’t sure how he knew this, but when he opened his eyes he could sense the sun had been down for quite some time.   
  
For a long while, he just layed there, staring up at his ceiling. He needed to shower, to dress, but working up the energy for that was another matter entirely. But he also knew he could not spend the next few weeks, months, moping. Sanghyuk wasn’t going to come help him to his feet again this time.   
  
Jaehwan felt his lip tremble, and he closed his eyes, breathed deeply. He was not going to cry again, he wasn’t, and after a few moments of clenching his hands in the comforter, he managed to fight the urge off.  
  
He rolled out of the bed, striding swiftly to the bathroom. His face felt stiff from the blood that had dried there over the course of the day, and he still didn’t have it in him to shower, so instead he turned the tap on and simply splashed warm water over his face. The blood dissolved, smearing over his hands before running down the drain. Once the water was clear again, the rusty red all gone from Jaehwan’s face, he used the excess water on his hands to slick his hair back, put it back in some semblance of order.   
  
The finished product still looked— broken, worn. But even when he worked to put all his pieces back into place, he still looked that way, it bled through the cracks. So it did not truly matter.  
  
He left the bathroom, left his room altogether, going in search of his children. They were still in, he could sense them about.  
  
The marble was cold, but his feet were too, and this sweatpants dragged softly against the stone as he walked. He passed Wonshik and Hongbin’s room, as the door was fully ajar, showing it was empty. Again, he wondered what time it was. They might be in the kitchen, or if it was even later than he thought—  
  
“Wonshik?” Jaehwan called as he approached the library. The door was cracked, but only a little.  
  
“He’s in the kitchen, I think,” Hongbin called back, and Jaehwan steeled himself before he pushed the door open. Hongbin was also barefoot, and lounging fully on the library’s couch. He looked up from the book he’d been reading to blink at Jaehwan.  
  
“I was looking for either of you, but it was actually you I wanted to speak with,” Jaehwan said, suddenly feeling— shy, of all things. Shy and small and weak.   
  
Had Hongbin gawked or asked questions Jaehwan might have backed out, but as it was he closed the book he’d been reading, set it aside, and then tucked his legs in to make room for Jaehwan to sit beside him. Jaehwan was so full of nervous energy he’d rather have stayed standing, but he made himself perch in the empty space on the couch.   
  
When it became evident Hongbin wasn’t going to speak, Jaehwan was at a loss of how to lead into this. “I—” he began abruptly, before stopping. “Wonshik probably told you, about what I said last night.”  
  
“He did,” Hongbin said, eyeing him warily.   
  
Jaehwan swallowed, a little ashamed of how Hongbin seemed like he was worried Jaehwan would lash at him. It was understandable, given Jaehwan’s behavior over the last few months. “It’s alright,” he said tiredly. “I know you two have no secrets, and I’m glad I do not have to explain again.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Jaehwan,” Hongbin murmured. “I know— Wonshik said you were going to start talking to us, so, I mean— I can listen, if you need me to.”  
  
“I wasn’t sure if either of you would want to deal with it, but especially you,” Jaehwan said, looking down at his hands, clasped in his lap. “You— I’m sorry, Hongbin. For what I did to you a few months ago. For threatening you. You were trying to help and you— you were right, in the end, had I spoken to Sanghyuk sooner some of this might have been salvaged. But as it is, Sanghyuk cannot be around me anymore, and I cannot blame him for it.”  
  
“I think you both are wounded, and need time to heal away from one another,” Hongbin said softly. He tilted his head to the side. “You— you frightened me, back then, you know, but in the end you’re— you’re not—” His face twisted in frustration. “You’re not truly malicious, you’re not the utter bastard I think you were trying to seem to be.”  
  
“Am I not?” Jaehwan whispered.  
  
“No, you’re not. Jaehwan, you— you’re changing, I can see it happening, you’re becoming something better. The fact that you are sitting here apologizing and asking for help proves that,” Hongbin said, and Jaehwan blinked away the tears that were threatening to form, thinking he didn’t deserve such kindness, but grateful beyond words for it. “And I want to help if I can, help you get better. You said something, last night, about issues that needed to be resolved.”  
  
Jaehwan swallowed thickly. “I don’t even know how to begin piecing through this anymore. Sanghyuk started the process, unravelling all my knots, and now they’re all— jumbled in ways I am unfamiliar with.”  
  
Hongbin shifted, so he was sitting cross-legged on the couch, facing Jaehwan. “Well, I mean, what exactly were you talking to Sanghyuk about?”  
  
Jaehwan recoiled a little. He hadn’t planned to talk about it _now_ , he’d wanted to mentally prepare. “We’d— well, we started with—” he stuttered, finding it was harder to dredge the words up in front of Hongbin’s keen gaze, than it had been to speak of it with Sanghyuk. He’d already faced this once, and had begun coming to terms with it all, but it was still hard, he found, to drag it all into the light. “We started with my turning and— and the regrets around that.” Jaehwan looked away.  
  
There was a strange note in Hongbin’s voice when he next spoke. “You regret turning?”  
  
Jaehwan took a steadying breath. “Yes,” he whispered, barely audible. “And many other things.”   
  
He chanced a glance at Hongbin, who had an expression on his face Jaehwan couldn’t define. It looked calculating, almost, but not as cold. “Jaehwan,” Hongbin said, “how old were you when you turned?”  
  
“I was— twenty-one? Twenty-two? Twenty-two,” he murmured, thinking back. “My birthday was in spring, and I was turned in summer.”  
  
“I was turned in winter,” Hongbin said, eyes unwavering, and it make Jaehwan’s breath catch a little. They never spoke of Hongbin’s turning— at least, he never spoke of it with Jaehwan. Belatedly, Jaehwan realized he should not, perhaps, be complaining to Hongbin about this particular subject.   
  
“Hongbin— I’m—” Jaehwan said, but Hongbin shook his head, smiling a little.  
  
“It’s alright, Jaehwan,” Hongbin said easily. “I have no regrets, my fate was snatched out of my hands. But yours wasn’t.”   
  
“No,” Jaehwan agreed, “I made my own choices, my own mistakes.” He was glad Hongbin was so serene about the subject. It had always been a point of tension, with Taekwoon.   
  
  
“Because you were very young,” Hongbin said, eyes travelling over Jaehwan’s face. “I always thought you looked like you’d been turned in your late teens, but I wasn’t sure if you just had a baby face.” Jaehwan huffed a little over that, and it made Hongbin smile. “Why did you turn, Jaehwan?”  
  
Oh, this was where things began to get difficult. “You know I was a sorcerer,” Jaehwan said, and Hongbin nodded. “Well, I’d been working on—”  
  
He cut off, head snapping to look to the door, which had begun to swing inwards. Wonshik was standing in the doorway, holding several blood bags and having frozen when he saw Jaehwan. “Oh,” he said, looking from Jaehwan to Hongbin and back again. “I— sorry, I didn’t know you were up. I was just bringing Hongbin some blood.”  
  
Hongbin gave a fondly exasperated sigh and motioned for Wonshik to come into the room. Wonshik stepped forward tentatively, handing Hongbin a blood bag when he reached out for one. Jaehwan took one too, which seemed to surprise and please Wonshik.  
  
“I hope I didn’t interrupt,” Wonshik said, a bit shy, glancing at Jaehwan.  
  
“You did,” Hongbin said cheerfully. “But it’s ok, I think you need to be here for this anyway.”  
  
Jaehwan looked at Hongbin in betrayal. Hongbin pointedly ignored him.  
  
Wonshik, though, looked curious, and he sat down on the edge of the coffee table, facing them. “What were you talking about?”  
  
“Jaehwan was telling me about the circumstances around his turning. He said he was turned when he was twenty-two, in the summer, and that he has since regretted the decision,” Hongbin said breezily, and Jaehwan sucked on his straw moodily.   
  
Wonshik’s eyes were wide when he looked to Jaehwan. “You regret being turned?” he asked, then frowned, “or being turned when you were twenty-two? Or in the summer?”  
  
Hongbin unfolded his legs simply for the purpose to lightly kicking Wonshik’s knee. “He regrets being turned, dumbass,” Hongbin said, and Wonshik stuck the tip of his tongue out at him, brow furrowed.  
  
“Why?” Wonshik asked, looking up at Jaehwan from his perch on the table.   
  
Jaehwan’s eyes flickered to Hongbin for a moment. “I’d been a sorcerer,” Jaehwan said, starting again, able to find his words a bit easier, this time around.  
  
As he spoke, recounting what he’d already told Sanghyuk, Wonshik poked into a blood bag for himself, and Hongbin settled back into the cushions to listen. Having them as an audience wasn’t the same as talking to Sanghyuk, lacked that heart-wrenching intimacy, but it still gave Jaehwan comfort, to share himself with them.   
  
Maybe there was something to this after all.  
  
——  
  
The sun was shining brightly, the sky a vibrant, clear blue, and it was rather incongruous with how cold the air was. Sanghyuk’s breath puffed out in a visible cloud when he breathed.   
  
He hadn’t been out in the daylight hours in a long while, especially not with the present company, but it felt good, felt safe, sitting on a park bench in the frosty light.  
  
Ilhoon looked like shit in direct sunlight, though a lot of that was probably just because it highlighted the dark circles under his eyes. Sanghyuk knew he probably didn’t look much better. As Sanghyuk watched, Ilhoon took a sip of his americano and then made a face.  
  
“I told you to get the hot cocoa,” Sanghyuk murmured, his own hands wrapped around a paper cup of just that.   
  
Ilhoon sniffed, huddling down into his scarf. “Yeah, well, it’s warm on my hands if nothing else.” He slid Sanghyuk a side glance. “You need to stop stalling.”  
  
Sanghyuk swallowed, looking away, across the park. There were still kids here and there, playing, bundled up in puffy coats. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”  
  
“I told you: owe me an explanation,” Ilhoon said. “Like, from the beginning. Everything you’ve been keeping quiet. I didn’t want to pry before, but after what happened three nights ago, it is officially my business.”   
  
Sanghyuk pursed his lips. “And I told you, it won’t happen again. I spoke to him about it.” He chanced a glance at Ilhoon, who was just staring at him expectantly, one eyebrow cocked in demand. “Ilhoon, I genuinely think you already know all the main points.”  
  
“I don’t know why you didn’t walk away before he went crazy over you,” Ilhoon said, “or why you’re still hanging around him, to be honest. Like, I get it, he’s a hot vampire and the sex is probably astronomical, but Sanghyuk, it can’t be _that_ good.”  
  
Sanghyuk felt his cheeks turning red, and wondered if he blushed hard enough, if steam would come off his face. “We haven’t had sex in a long time, actually.” He paused. “We actually haven’t— touched, really, in a long time either.” They hadn’t touched since the last time they’d had sex, which was months and months ago. The one exception had been— when Sanghyuk had let Jaehwan feed on him after his breakdown.   
  
Ilhoon’s expression turned downright quizzical. “So then— I know you were fuck buddies, but without the buddies part. And then if you take away the fuck part too you’re not left with anything. Did you put a stop to it and he just— kept coming around because he’s obsessed? Because, you know, Sanghyuk, need I remind you that you’re a hunter and have a lot of pointy silver objects.”  
  
“I thought about it a few times, to be honest,” Sanghyuk said, a bit wretched. “But no, not exactly. He— he’s kind of a fixture in my life due to circumstance.”  
  
“I swear to god, if you keep being vague, I am going to pour this shitty coffee on your head.”  
  
Sanghyuk sighed heavily. “He’s Wonshik’s maker,” he murmured, and he could almost see the light bulb switch on over Ilhoon’s head.   
  
“Oh,” Ilhoon said lamely. “So that’s— how you met him?”  
  
Sanghyuk looked away. “Yeah.”  
  
There was quiet between them for a moment, and Sanghyuk spent it listening to the wind whispering softly, the far away sounds of two boys playing soccer on the other side of the hill.  
  
Finally Ilhoon said, “I always kind of assumed you met him on a hunt, or something.”  
  
 _No, that is how Hakyeon and Taekwoon met_ , Sanghyuk thought, but didn’t say.   
  
“When he touched me, my wards didn’t affect him at all,” Ilhoon was continuing.   
  
“Because he’s an Elimia,” Sanghyuk murmured, and Ilhoon nodded shortly. “Mine don’t work on him either.”  
  
“You’ve tried to use them on him?”  
  
Sanghyuk smiled a little to himself. “It’s more like sometimes it just— happens. You know they’re not fully controllable. And it was especially bad in the beginning. It was— hard, being around a vampire as old as him at the start. It took adjusting to.”  
  
Ilhoon was staring at him, seeming content to let Sanghyuk talk, and Sanghyuk sighed shakily.   
  
“When we first met— I was more concerned with Wonshik. I couldn’t understand Jaehwan, it’s been so long since he was human that his nuances at the beginning were hard for me to read. Eventually he expressed his interest in me in such a way that even I couldn’t misinterpret.” Sanghyuk found himself blushing, which was silly, especially in the current company.  
  
“And so you decided what the hell, I’ll fuck a vampire?” Ilhoon asked, like this was a reasonable thing to just up and decide to do.  
  
Sanghyuk slid him a look. “No. I was fucking terrified of him at the go, and— caught up in the immoral aspects of it all,” he muttered, and Ilhoon sighed heavily, like Sanghyuk not wanting to sleep with a vampire because it was wrong and probably unnatural was a ridiculous protest to have. “Don’t you start, I know you’d fuck the devil himself without a second thought, but this was— me, and I was especially green then.”  
  
“You were such a cute little virgin,” Ilhoon said wistfully. “Who knew vampires were into that.”  
  
Sanghyuk opted not to comment on that. “He wore me down eventually, obviously. And no, before you ask, he didn’t glamour me. Jaehwan’s— he’s charming when he wants to be, and there’s something about him that’s just very compelling,” Sanghyuk murmured. “I liked him, but I— even then I knew, or thought I knew, that he could never love me, that if I grew to care for him he would tear me apart emotionally. He was just— that sort of person. Fun to fuck and spar verbally with, full of sharp wit and intelligence— but he was derisive of softer emotions.”  
  
“Ah,” Ilhoon said delicately. “I’d expect such an attitude, from a vampire so old.” Sanghyuk didn’t say anything about that, because while Jaehwan’s personality and views were expected, especially given everything Sanghyuk had learned of him of late, Taekwoon was a polar opposite and even older than Jaehwan. But he could not tell Ilhoon of that. “How did you get from there to here? From fuck buddies to—”  
  
“To Jaehwan being obsessively in love?” Sanghyuk finished grimly. “I honestly have no fucking clue Ilhoon. I— didn’t even know it was happening. He was so— frightened and abhorrent of the fact that he was falling for me that he hid it and decided acting like he was indifferent to me, at best, was the solution. I think his philosophy was fake it until you make it. If he pretended he wasn’t in love it would make it true.”  
  
“And in the meanwhile you— you actually weren’t in love, and acted accordingly.” Ilhoon paused then said a little sheepishly, “Fucking your way through all the good clubs in the city.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sanghyuk sighed. “He was so possessive, angry about it, I told you about it at the time and it just seemed like he was being a controlling bastard but in retrospect it makes sense if— if he was in love.”  
  
Ilhoon gave him a sharp look. “It doesn’t excuse the things he said to you, the way he treated you. It’s his own damn fault you didn’t know.”  
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk said. “I know, and I told him as much after he confessed to me. Him being in love with me makes it all make sense, but it doesn’t make any of it okay. It doesn’t make the hurt he inflicted on me okay. I was vulnerable to the abuse he spat at me, because even though I was never in love— I got close, Ilhoon.” Sanghyuk was horrified to find his voice cracked as he said it.   
  
“You said that before,” Ilhoon murmured. “But, Sanghyuk, are you sure you just got close?”  
  
Sanghyuk’s fingers tightened on the paper cup in his hands, and he had to check himself before he accidentally crushed it. “No,” he whispered, “I’m not sure.” He looked despairingly at Ilhoon. “I don’t think I fell. But I think I cared. I think I cared enough that it’s— it’s why I could never fall for someone else. Even at the end, when he was falling apart because _we_ were falling apart, and it all went so bad, it wasn’t enough to make it go away.” He bit his bottom lip harshly for a moment. “After a time I sort of began to— not forget, I can’t forget him, can’t forget how he made me feel, but at least distance myself enough that it was okay that we’d fallen apart, were over. But then he— he—”  
  
“He?” Ilhoon prompted gently.  
  
“He confessed,” Sanghyuk whispered. “And it’s like you said, him being in love with me doesn’t excuse his words or actions, like he seemed to think it would, but it gave me the reason I had been so desperately craving. A reason for the cruelty, for the pain. I understood he’d acted as he did because he was afraid and stupid, so stupid, three hundred years of repression and _stupidity_. And I knew coming clean as he did was like cutting himself open.” Sanghyuk, with effort, met Ilhoon’s eyes, and he found them as level and intense as always. “I— it got to me,” Sanghyuk admitted. “In the moment I was still angry at him, and hurt, and wanted to be done with him, but I knew deep down that it was more than that. I needed to stay away, because I didn’t love him, I didn’t, but I _could_ , and if he was in love with me and tried to seduce me again I—”  
  
“You’d be in trouble,” Ilhoon finished. “When did this happen?”  
  
“It happened the night after I first told you my lover was a vampire,” Sanghyuk murmured. “I went to see Kyungsoo — my sorcerer — and found out Jaehwan had been following me again—” At Ilhoon’s quizzical look, Sanghyuk added, “Jaehwan is prone to that. I thought it was a possessive thing, but he told me he was trying to keep me safe. He— when I split from Sungjae and went solo he had a hard time with it. I realize now, why.” He swallowed thickly, taking a sip of his now cool cocoa. “I went to confront him about it, and he finally broke.”  
  
“And you— what? That was a month ago now, you’ve been hanging around him since?”  
  
Sanghyuk shook his head. “I told him I didn’t love him back, that him loving me couldn’t— fix this. That it didn’t fix him, in the end. And I told him to stop following me around, and then I left.” He sighed. “And for a few days I had peace. But then— then Wonshik came by, said Jaehwan had been crying for days and wouldn’t say why. This was a problem simply because vampires cry blood, you see, and Jaehwan also was refusing to feed.”  
  
“That’s... an interesting fact, and one I did not know,” Ilhoon said, far too mildly.  
  
“He couldn’t die from not feeding, but he could descend into bloodlust, and the idea of Jaehwan loose on the city and out of his mind was— concerning, to say the least,” Sanghyuk said, mouth twisting. “They couldn’t persuade him with words or force to eat, so Wonshik— he asked if I wouldn’t talk to him, try and convince him to feed.”   
  
“A hunter convincing a vampire to feed, how ironic,” Ilhoon said a bit dryly, and Sanghyuk didn’t need to be reminded.   
  
“I sort of— I have been, repeatedly, underestimating the depths of Jaehwan’s feelings for me. He was in a bad way, when I went to see him. I— I let him feed on me.” At Ilhoon’s incredulous look, he added, “I know I’m a bleeding heart, you don’t need to say it.”  
  
Ilhoon opted to not say anything in reply to that, just simply shook his head a little, finally looking away, out over the park, towards the lake. Sanghyuk looked too, at the water glinting in the bright sunlight, trying to calm down. He found himself feeling shaky and, oddly, sad.  
  
“So what is happening now then, Sanghyuk?” Ilhoon asked softly. “You seem very unsettled.”  
  
Sanghyuk’s hands were cold. “I convinced him he needed to eat, but— he’d spent the last three centuries with his head in the sand, burying so much deep inside of him and it was rotting away at his foundations. He told me he understood that he needed to function, but he just— couldn’t. He didn’t know how to deal with everything. So I told him I’d help him. He— he lost a lot, when he turned, has lost a lot since then. He needed to work through it all, face it, and he was too frightened to do it on his own, and— and I knew I was the only one he could talk to. His— his feelings for me opened the door for that. In the interest of getting him back on his feet, and maybe helping him get over it all and becoming a semi-decent individual for Wonshik’s sake, I agreed to listen, to draw the poison out of him.”   
  
Sanghyuk put his cup down on the bench beside him so he could hug himself. “I know it may sound stupid, but Jaehwan— this is something he’s clearly struggled with for a long time, he’s in a lot of pain, and now that he’s cracked open I can see it so clearly and it hurts. At the start of our relationship, there were moments where all the sharpness fell away and he was so engaging and almost sweet— and he’s like that, now, no longer trying to hold up a mask for me in the same way, laying himself bare. Underneath the razor edges he’s so soft, Ilhoon, soft and hurt and I want to touch him and hold him and I hate myself for it.”  
  
“Has it occurred to you,” Ilhoon murmured, “that this could all be a ploy to get you to come back around?”  
  
“It has,” Sanghyuk replied. He thought of Jaehwan curled up on his bed, face streaked with blood, of the way he’d looked at Sanghyuk, when he’d first come back to see him, eyes full of worship. He knew it was within Jaehwan to lie and manipulate, and he knew he’d do anything, anything, to get Sanghyuk to love him. But he knew that wasn’t what this was about. “It isn’t though.”  
  
Ilhoon huffed. “How can you be sure? Especially because— it’s working, Sanghyuk.”  
  
Sanghyuk’s fingertips dug into his own upper arms. “He ended it last night,” he whispered, and Ilhoon stilled. It wasn’t the same as a vampire’s stillness, but it was a good human mimicry. “We— I didn’t mean to tell him about your prediction, it slipped out, and he took it hard and— went after you for it. I was angry, but more than that, after thinking about it I realized I was also— cracking. Which I’m sure you can see.” Sanghyuk’s eyes stung and his throat felt thick. “I spent months distancing myself and getting over him and moving on and after a few weeks of him being wounded and gentle and needing me desperately I— I think I’m right back where I was at the beginning. Teetering on the edge of falling for him. And I’m frightened. I can’t— I can’t love him, he’s changing for the better, I can see it happening, but I just— I can’t trust him. So I told him I couldn’t be his pillar anymore, I couldn’t listen to him pour himself out anymore, that he should talk to Wonshik. I think he thinks it’s because I was mad at him, and I can’t tell him the truth. I don’t want to give him false hope.”  
  
“That sounds like you ended it, not him.”  
  
Sanghyuk shook his head. “I ended— that part. But I’m a fool still wanted to see him, spend time with him, as friends, as _something_. And he told me we couldn’t, that— that if we kept spending time together he’d inevitably hurt me again, as he always did. And he didn’t want that. So we said goodbye.” He gave Ilhoon a wan smile. “So, if the objective was to simply keep me around, I— I don’t think he would have broken it off. For my sake.” He paused. “The fact that he did so shows me how much he’s already changing.”  
  
He expected Ilhoon to say something, but the other boy was curiously silent, staring hard at the horizon.  
  
“And what about you, Sanghyuk?” Ilhoon finally said. “You listened to his pain, tried to help him heal, but what of your pain, of your closure? Because you haven’t got any. Your wounds are still raw.”  
  
Sanghyuk pulled back, just a little. “What do you mean?”  
  
“We spoke before of you imprinting on him—”  
  
“Kyungsoo said that isn’t possible.”  
  
“Maybe not magically, but what about simply emotionally, Sanghyuk? I watched you grow sharp and hard and cold, and you were so sweet and soft before. You definitely still have aspects of that, but— he changed you. He hurt you. You can’t deny it.”  
  
Sanghyuk found himself shaking a little. “Because— I got too close, too close to falling in love, and—”  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon interrupted gently, “I think you _were_ in love, even just a little. I think you offered yourself to him in little pieces, trying, extending kindness and softness that he destroyed because he was too afraid to accept it. And finally you were burned enough that you gave up and pulled back but— Sanghyuk, he still hurt you. He hurt you and all this time it’s just been about his pain, and how you can help him through it, but Sanghyuk, what about what he owes you?”  
  
Sanghyuk stood, pacing away and then coming back. “What does he owe me, Ilhoon?” Sanghyuk asked harshly. “If I did love him— he loves me now. He’s given my feelings back tenfold.”  
  
“No, he’s given you his. He still has pieces of you,” Ilhoon said calmly, still sitting. “Too many pieces.”  
  
“And how am I supposed to get them back? How am I supposed to heal?” Sanghyuk said, verging on slight hysteria. “I’m going to die soon, I don’t have _time_.”  
  
“I can’t answer that, Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said, looking away and popping the lid off his coffee cup. “What will give you closure? What do you want?”  
  
 _I want those moments back_ , Sanghyuk thought. _I want them back and untainted_.  
  
There’d been so much intimacy shared between them at times— taking baths together, lit by candlelight, the air smelling thickly of roses. Jaehwan showing off his collection of weird and wonderful artifacts, the shrunken heads and charmed necklaces. Them watching Pacific Rim together, Sanghyuk leaning back against Jaehwan’s chest, Jaehwan complaining loudly about tasteless it was. The heat of Jaehwan’s face when he had hidden it in Sanghyuk’s neck when Sanghyuk fucked him.   
  
He gave Jaehwan so much, tried so hard, and it hadn’t been enough. He thought he hadn’t, thought he’d kept himself in check, but he was wrong. And it wasn’t love, it was never love, but it was _something_ and it was accidental and he needed to deal with it. He just didn’t know how.  
  
“I don’t know,” Sanghyuk said, and it was an echo of when Jaehwan had asked him the same question three nights ago.  
  
Ilhoon gave him a speaking glance and poured his americano out over the bushes.  
  
——  
  
The man Jaehwan had pinned to the grimy wall of a rundown building felt nothing like Sanghyuk, tasted nothing like Sanghyuk. He was too short, too thin, smelled like the streets and tasted like black oil and smoke.   
  
The man made no noise as Jaehwan drank deeply from his neck, too glamoured to resurface. He ran a bit warmer than Sanghyuk, who tended to feel cool to the touch, possibly from bad circulation, and fuck but Jaehwan wished he could stop comparing every human he fed from to Sanghyuk. But every time he couldn’t help but think back to a few weeks ago, to Sanghyuk letting Jaehwan nip at the inside of his arm, have a taste of him. At the time, it hadn’t fully sunk in that it would be the last time Jaehwan got to drink from him. He wished he’d savored it more at the time.   
  
The flow of blood into Jaehwan’s mouth was growing sluggish as the heart slowed, and when it stopped Jaehwan pulled back. He didn’t need to get every drop, didn’t feel like working for it tonight. He let the body fall down to the ground and stepped away, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. His hand was shaking a little, and he tried to steady it.  
  
It was still the middle of the night, the streets around him quiet and still, the sound of leaves skittering over the cement in the breeze was the only thing to break the quiet. He had ventured out to feed and hadn’t planned his night out much past that, and the silence felt like a physical weight. His eyes went to the corpse slumped over against the wall and he found himself again noting all the physical differences between it and Sanghyuk.  
  
He couldn’t be alone tonight, he realised, as much as he would like to be. There were thoughts pervading his mind, like smoke, insidious and impossible to fight against. He needed a distraction, lest his mind go in circles thinking of Sanghyuk, wondering where he was, home and warm and safe, or out on the streets, the sweet susurration of blood under his skin a calling to creatures like Jaehwan. Creatures that would do to him what Jaehwan had just done to the man lying at his feet.   
  
If Jaehwan did not stop himself, he’d be too tempted to seek Sanghyuk out, try in vain to watch over him. And he’d promised to stop that, and did not want to break that promise. So he headed home, quickly, like he was fleeing his own impulses.   
  
When he stepped through the front door to his house, he found he was still trembling a bit. “Hongbin?” he called, “Wonshik?” He knew they were home, the wards informed him such. They’d not been going out as much lately; perhaps the winter chill killing off so much of the foliage was putting a dampener on Hongbin’s photography prospects. Whatever the reason, Jaehwan was glad of it, had begun taking solace in their presences, both apart and together. More and more of late they’d been spending time in different parts of the house, occupying themselves differently. They weren’t fighting, and it was odd, to Jaehwan, that they would choose to have space to themselves. It was probably healthy, although Jaehwan had very little basis for comparison.  
  
“Here,” Hongbin replied, and Jaehwan went into the house proper and found him and Wonshik sitting side by side on the couch together in the living room. Hongbin’s legs were curled up so that he was almost leaning into Wonshik. The laptop that they shared was open on the coffee table and Jaehwan could hear a movie playing, a woman talking, the sounds of a car driving. They both looked up as Jaehwan wandered into the room, and Hongbin gave him a small smile.   
  
“Were you hunting?” he asked, his voice pitched just loud enough to be heard over the movie but not enough to ruin the easy atmosphere. Wonshik shifted a little, moving in against Hongbin further.  
  
“Yes,” Jaehwan said. He could still smell the scent of his victim’s smoke on his clothes, but instead of going to shower and change, he sat down on his usual chair, subconsciously mimicking Hongbin’s pose. Wonshik watched him for a couple of moments, looking like he wanted to say something, but when Jaehwan just sat there and listened to the movie they had been watching, he turned his attention back to the screen.   
  
The movie had apparently been close to the end — or Jaehwan lost track of time as he sat there and listened to it — because before he knew it, there was the sound of the ending credit music, an instrumental track that sounded vaguely familiar. Perhaps it was simply that it sounded like every other movie soundtrack made nowadays.   
  
Jaehwan glanced up and found Wonshik and Hongbin having a conversation entirely in silent eyebrow lifts and tiny jerks of their heads. Even in silent conversation, Jaehwan could tell they were talking of him. He wasn’t sure what made him say it, maybe the music filling the room, but something prompted him to open his mouth and say, “I used to play the piano.”   
  
Wonshik and Hongbin’s heads snapped around to stare at him. Jaehwan pressed his lips together like he was holding back a smile but he wasn’t really in the mood for smiling. There was silence for a minute before Wonshik blurted out, “Wait, really?”   
  
Hongbin smacked him on the upper arm.  
  
Jaehwan did crack a smile at that. “Yes, really. Back before— well. A long time ago.”   
  
“Before your maker died?” Hongbin asked. Jaehwan nodded, jerkily. “Did you like it?”   
  
“Yes. It was something I was very good at. Singing, too.” His voice grew softer as he spoke.  
  
“Did you learn after you’d been turned?” Wonshik asked curiously. The corners of Hongbin’s mouth quirked at that for some reason.  
  
“No,” Jaehwan said, trying recall some childhood memories, very blurry and muffled to his mind now. “I started when I was quite young, perhaps five? I was a small child, at any rate. My parents thought it best to begin at a young age.”  
  
“Oh,” Wonshik said, shoulders slumping a bit. “I’ve been thinking I should try to take up some kind of hobby. Hongbin has his photography, after all.”  
  
“You didn’t have a hobby when living?” Jaehwan asked. “Just went through life listening to dreadful music and killing hapless vampires?”  
  
Wonshik didn’t rise to the bait, shrugging. “I watched movies too,” he said. “Read books.”   
  
“Never did laundry,” Hongbin added helpfully, and laughed when Wonshik glared at him. He bumped their shoulders together. “Whatever you decide to do will be better than what Hakyeon’s post-turning hobby has become.”   
  
Jaehwan narrowed his eyes, wondering what nonsense his brother’s wife was getting up to now. “And what is that?”   
  
“Obscene amounts of olympic grade sex,” Hongbin said, and his cackles were drowned out by both Jaehwan and Wonshik protesting.   
  
“I don’t want to _think_ about it,” Wonshik complained, and Jaehwan added, “And I am quite sure it is not olympic grade sex, to be sure.”  
  
Hongbin’s laughter subsided into snickers. “But, truly, we’ve forever to live, we could do anything we wanted,” he said. “I always wanted to play guitar, I might pick that up some point soon.” He looked to Jaehwan. “Do you play guitar?”  
  
“No,” Jaehwan said, stiffening a little. “Just piano.”  
  
“I could pick that up too,” he mused. He seemed to note he was brushing against a nerve, but they’d discussed going out of Jaehwan’s comfort zone, pushing it, a little. “If you stopped playing after your maker died, does that mean there’s a piano in this house?”  
  
“There is,” Jaehwan said, clipped, “but I would prefer it be left alone.”  
  
“So you won’t play for us?” Wonshik asked.  
  
“No,” Jaehwan replied, voice a little harder. Wonshik just shrugged and settled down. There was a long silence.   
  
“Why did you stop, Jaehwan?” Hongbin asked suddenly. “You’d been playing since you were small.”  
  
“I think I gave it up because I wanted to get as far from my human self as I could,” Jaehwan said softly. And then, before they could say anything else that cut too close to the bone for him, he said, “It was a rather feminine hobby for the time, but as I was the youngest child, my parents were content to be a bit lax with me.”  
  
“That explains some things,” Wonshik said, and Jaehwan sent him a look that could peel paint off walls. That had been exactly what Sanghyuk said when he’d found out as well.  
  
Hongbin was shifting, turning his body towards Jaehwan. “When exactly were you born, Jaehwan?”  
  
That made Jaehwan grin, fangs sharpening just slightly. “Guess,” he said.  
  
“Well you were turned at twenty-two and are somewhere around three hundred years old,” Hongbin muttered, mostly to himself, clearly thinking about it.  
  
“Math was never my strong suit,” Wonshik said, glancing at Hongbin expectantly  
  
“Somewhere in the early 1700s?” Hongbin said, then his eyes widened. “Oh, I never really thought about it before.”  
  
“1689, if my memory serves,” Jaehwan murmured, taking pleasure in the looks on his children’s faces. “It was a very different time.”  
  
Hongbin was fully scooting across the couch now, laying his hands on the arm of the couch so he could rest his chin upon them and stare avidly at Jaehwan. “Tell us.”  
  
The brightest of Jaehwan’s human memories flashed through his mind. They all were fuzzy and muffled compared to the clarity of his vampire recollections, but if he truly sifted, he could unearth quite a few. “What do you want to know?”  
  
“What do you remember?” Hongbin immediately shot back. Wonshik leaned forward and closed the laptop, which had fallen silent several minutes ago anyway.  
  
What did Jaehwan remember. He remembered getting rapped over the knuckles with a wooden spoon by the cook his family employed, for he often snuck into the kitchen to steal sweet pastries hot out of the oven. He remembered the basset hound that followed on his heels as a child, grey around the muzzle for he’d been quite old already when Jaehwan was born. He remembered hiding under chairs and frightening the maids by grabbing at their ankles. He remembered early mornings, stealing across the grounds of his family’s estate to the neighboring peach orchard, getting chased out screaming and laughing by the grounds keepers, arms full of stolen fruit.  
  
He remembered the first time he picked a rose bud and made it bloom beneath his fingers, magic tingling over his skin. And after that he remembered growing up with blood and soot on his hands, remembered the opium dens, the women there painted and pliant. He remembered running through the night, reckless and unafraid.  
  
He remembered being on the cusp of death in a vampire’s arms, crying softly.  
  
“I remember many things,” Jaehwan said, then his voice lowered. “I remember more than I realized.” Hongbin and Wonshik stared at him, waiting, expectant. Jaehwan felt himself smiling at the sight. “Would you believe I used to often get up before dawn to sneak out and steal peaches from my neighbor?”  
  
“Easily,” Wonshik quipped, and Jaehwan laughed.  
  
“I stopped when I was about eleven, for one day when I was fleeing capture I took a different route and slipped in a creek, slicing my head open,” he said ruefully, touching a spot above his right temple, just on his hairline. “The scar is far faded by now, but there was a dreadful amount of blood. The maids couldn’t get it out of my shirt.”  
  
“Was this a shocking thing, or where you they used to it?” Hongbin asked, sounding like he already knew the answer.  
  
“Oh, I was quite a scandalous little brat,” Jaehwan said laughingly. “And I grew up into a horribly obnoxious fop, to be quite honest. Perhaps had my parents reined me in, my life would have turned out differently. But as it was, I spent my human life flitting about as my whims took me, until they took me into death.” Jaehwan’s smile turned self-deprecating, thinking about the human he’d been right before turning, full of hope and promise.   
  
He was surprised to find it didn’t bring him the pain it used to.  
  
“Jaehwan?” Wonshik asked. “Are you okay?”  
  
Jaehwan shook himself. “I think,” he said, “that perhaps, I am beginning to be.”  
  
——  
  
It was cold, but the sunlight was bright, almost too bright. Sanghyuk had his hands wrapped around a paper cup of cheap cocoa, steam coming off it in lazy swirls. The world seemed foggy around the edges with frost. Sanghyuk’s breath puffed out as be breathed, and his butt was cold against the bench. There was a feeling of deja vu plucking at him, but he couldn’t focus on it.  
  
He turned to his company, sitting beside him on the bench, shoulders not quite brushing his. Jaehwan looked back at him, an americano cupped in his own hands. “Are you cold?” he asked. His eyes sparkled, reflecting the frost around them. “We can go back to my house.”  
  
Darkness. Sanghyuk didn’t want to go back to the darkness yet. Jaehwan’s hair glinted so prettily in the winter sunlight.   
  
“No, I want to stay here,” Sanghyuk said, and Jaehwan laughed richly, like he could read Sanghyuk’s thoughts. It made Sanghyuk’s face feel hot. “Do you like the winter, Jaehwan?”  
  
Jaehwan had stopped laughing, but a smile still lingered on his face as he looked out over the park. They were alone, not even the sound of the lake there to disturb them. “I prefer spring,” he said softly, and there was something there, some secret, but Sanghyuk could not know it.  
  
“I think spring suits you,” Sanghyuk murmured. When Jaehwan looked at him again, he was still smiling, but it was a bit sad now. “I wish we could go walking, in the spring. There’s flowers here.”  
  
“You know I can’t,” Jaehwan whispered. And then he was gone, and Sanghyuk was sitting alone on the park bench, an icy breeze tugging at his hair.   
  
He was shivering. Truly shivering. The knowledge of it unsettled him, and he came out of sleep slowly, lured out of slumber by the need to attend to something wrong.   
  
Sometime in the night he’d flung his blankets off himself and onto the floor, and there was a draft radiating from the window. His toes felt icy, and he groggily reached over the side of his bed, gathering his blankets up and wrapping himself back in them.  
  
The image of Jaehwan sitting in sunlight, pale skin smooth and unmarked, his lovely eyes glinting, was seared into Sanghyuk’s mind. He wished it could be a reality. Jaehwan was not meant to be stuck in darkness, kept in solitude. It was probably a big part of what had caused his sadness, along with everything else.   
  
Sanghyuk swallowed. He wanted to go back to sleep and dream of it again. And yet he knew that was part of the problem. But he couldn’t seem to stop. He ached for closure, for reconciliation, for anything, at this point.  
  
He ached for Jaehwan’s touch, and not in the way he used to.   
  
There would be no more sleep tonight, Sanghyuk knew, but he burrowed further into his blankets anyway. He couldn’t go on like this. Ilhoon was right. They’d focused so much on sorting out Jaehwan’s injuries even though Sanghyuk had his own, and it had all been left to poison him too. And he was succumbing to it.  
  
Something had to be done.


	2. Chapter 2

  
There were people in Jaehwan’s house. It was company Jaehwan did not especially want, currently. Thankfully if he sat in his favorite armchair being taciturn and unsociable none of the others seemed to mind overmuch.  
  
Wonshik kept shooting him glances and half smiling, and Jaehwan pulled a grotesque face at him, because Hakyeon was talking about some cookie recipe he’d found online and he hadn’t shut up for at _least_ ten minutes straight. Wonshik bit his bottom lip to stop from laughing.  
  
“You don’t even eat anymore,” Jaehwan finally interrupted. “Surely if you must put energy towards cooking you could look up how to make something useful. Like blood sorbet.”  
  
“Need we bring up the last time you got experimental with blood consumption?” Hongbin asked mildly.  
  
“I stand by what I said then; blood popsicles are a great idea. I just added a bit too much sugar— it is not my fault Wonshik has an especially sensitive stomach in regards to these things,” Jaehwan protested. Hakyeon was glaring so he winked at him.  
  
“You threw it all up too,” Hongbin pointed out.  
  
Jaehwan felt his nostrils flare. “Son, I will ground you.”  
  
“Sorry _dad_ ,” Hongbin said, and Jaehwan immediately choked, and then found himself laughing.   
  
“Oh, if only I was your maker,” Jaehwan said, still smiling, “I’d make it so you had to call brother dearest and his bride _uncle_ and _auntie_.” He slid Wonshik a mischievous look.  
  
“Don’t you dare, I swear to God I will set your couch on fire—” Wonshik said, not nearly even half as fearful as he should be, but then Taekwoon interrupted.  
  
“He won’t, you know he won’t,” Taekwoon murmured. He was almost smiling.  
  
Jaehwan was about to point out that Wonshik had every right to be concerned. After all, if Jaehwan so chose, he could make it so Wonshik could only quack as a form of communication for the rest of all eternity, and wouldn’t _that_ be amusing— but then the wards along the house rippled.   
  
The lot of them fell still and silent, feeling the house wards react to the intruder. It was far too mild of a reaction to be a threat.  
  
“It’s Sanghyuk,” Jaehwan said, and he sounded only half as tired as he felt. He’d told Sanghyuk they couldn’t— but of course it wasn’t fair, was it, to ask Sanghyuk to give up his friends because Jaehwan had no self control. Even if being near Sanghyuk was a trial by fire every time, he couldn’t escape having to see him sometimes. It was just a fact of life that Jaehwan was going to have to swallow.  
  
Sanghyuk didn’t knock, Sanghyuk never knocked, and oh how Jaehwan ached at the implied intimacy. He’d expected, hoped, Sanghyuk would look better than last time, more rested, but no, his eyes still looked bruised from the lack of sleep, and his jawline was unusually sharp. He’d lost weight. And he stopped dead when he walked into the living room and saw so many vampires.  
  
“Oh,” Sanghyuk said, a soft exhalation. His eyes swept over them all before landing on Jaehwan, who held his gaze like it was a compulsion.  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Hakyeon said, standing and smiling warmly. “You look exhausted, did you just come from work?”  
  
“No, I just— I haven’t been sleeping well,” Sanghyuk said absently, eyes still caught on Jaehwan, and then he seemed to snap back into the present, eyes moving to Hakyeon. “It’s good to see you.” He gave Taekwoon a shy smile and then looked at Wonshik and Hongbin. “And you two, I haven’t seen more than glimpses of you for a while.” His eyes returned to Jaehwan, but this time he was looking somewhere in the vicinity of Jaehwan’s knees rather than his eyes. “And— Jaehwan.”  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Jaehwan said, hands closing into loose fists where they rested atop his thighs. “We weren’t expecting you.”  
  
“Sorry,” Sanghyuk said, still not meeting his eyes. “I know I shouldn’t be dropping in.”  
  
“It’s not a good habit,” Hongbin said, voice still chipper despite the thickness to the air, “but you’ve been doing it for so long— we’re used to it.”  
  
“And it’s fine,” Jaehwan added with a firmness he didn’t feel. “You have friends here— you’ve a right to see them.” Sanghyuk’s gaze finally flickered back up to his face. “And besides— there is something we’ve been meaning to give you— Wonshik, will you—”  
  
Wonshik looked like he’d bitten into a lemon, but he flit away and then came back with startling swiftness, holding a plastic grocery bag, which he handed to Sanghyuk without looking at him.  
  
“What—” Hakyeon was asking suspiciously, and Jaehwan answered before he could finish.  
  
“It is simply a few of Sanghyuk’s belongings that he has left here,” Jaehwan said, knowing he sounded stiff and formal and hating it. To be precise, it was a pair of pajama bottoms, a toothbrush, a pair of earrings, and some other miscellaneous items Jaehwan had found tucked away in his rooms. “I thought they ought to be returned.”  
  
Sanghyuk was peering into the bag, and he looked so drawn. He murmured a very soft, “Thank you.”  
  
“Of course,” Jaehwan said, trying to make his voice breezier. “I’ve no interest in wearing your polka dot pajama bottoms. Even if they would fit.” Which they did not, and Jaehwan knew this because he had, in fact, tried them on. “If I find any other items around I shall send Wonshik with them.”  
  
Sanghyuk looked up from the bag, and he— he had a well of sadness in his eyes, sadness for Jaehwan, or perhaps pity, Jaehwan couldn’t tell.   
  
Jaehwan could not endure it. And he had no desire to fall apart in the living room, so he stood. “I know this is the mark of a bad host, but you must excuse me. I’m sure you want to catch up with the others, and besides, Hakyeon talks enough for a whole platoon of people.”  
  
He made for the hallway, swiftly, but not vamp speed; he didn’t want to _look_ like he was fleeing. And he’d almost made it, was at the mouth of the hallway when Sanghyuk called out, “Jaehwan, I’m here to talk to you.”  
  
Jaehwan was weak, had always been weak, so he stopped, but he didn’t turn around, couldn’t turn around. “Sanghyuk,” he said softly, “I rather think— that isn’t the best idea.”   
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk replied. He sounded tired.   
  
Jaehwan could walk away. It would cause the others to talk, but it might spare him whatever torment Sanghyuk was about to put him through. Then again, perhaps it was best to get it over with. The boy, after all, knew where he lived.  
  
Jaehwan inhaled deeply, schooling his face into mild curiosity before he turned around. Everyone was looking at him, all of them except Sanghyuk seeming frozen as they watched this unfold in front of them. Sanghyuk just looked resigned and exhausted.   
  
“Talk,” Jaehwan said, motioning, and Sanghyuk gave him a look that made Jaehwan think of when things were better between them.   
  
“Not here,” Sanghyuk said.   
  
Damn him, he was going to make Jaehwan _say_ it. “I don’t want to be alone with you.”  
  
“I know that too,” Sanghyuk murmured. He seemed to be forcing himself to meet Jaehwan’s gaze. “But there’s— I need—”  
  
“You owe him, Jaehwan,” Hakyeon said, and if Sanghyuk seemed apologetic, Hakyeon certainly wasn’t. “He came back here when he didn’t want to before; you owe him at least that much back.”  
  
Wonshik looked surprised that Hakyeon was encouraging private conversation between Jaehwan and Sanghyuk. It was a feeling Sanghyuk also seemed to echo, giving Hakyeon a somewhat wide eyed look, almost like he’d forgotten they weren’t already alone.   
  
“Hakyeon,” Taekwoon said, and Hakyeon seemed to fall back a little.   
  
But he was right, damn him. Jaehwan had a lot to make up for. So he clenched his fists and smiled tightly, saying, “Well, when put like that, I suppose protesting would be rather remiss. Lead the way, Sanghyuk.”  
  
Sanghyuk handed his bag off to Hakyeon and then stepped around Jaehwan, going into the hall, and Jaehwan followed.   
  
He assumed Sanghyuk would head to the library, but he walked right past it, and Jaehwan was somewhat relieved, unsure if he could sit in that room without breaking down, or worse, giving into his impulses and touching Sanghyuk. It soon became clear that Sanghyuk wasn’t heading for Jaehwan’s bedroom either, for which Jaehwan was also grateful, but after a time he became concerned Sanghyuk was taking him to the piano room and Jaehwan could not, he _could not_ —  
  
Sanghyuk stopped in front of one of his master’s old collection rooms. He looked to Jaehwan, as if asking for permission to open the door, and Jaehwan nodded, relieved he was being spared the agony of the piano room if nothing else.  
  
Sanghyuk opened the door and stepped through, and Jaehwan followed, not bothering to close the door behind them. It felt less intimate, that way.  
  
Both he and Sanghyuk spent a few moments looking around. This was one of the rooms Jaehwan had shown Sanghyuk, over a year ago now. It had the cursed necklace, the centaur tail— splatters of Jaehwan’s blood on the marble. Neither of them had been back here since that incident.  
  
Jaehwan swallowed thickly. “What did you want to talk about, Sanghyuk?”  
  
“You said we can’t be friends,” Sanghyuk whispered, looking away, at the shelves, “And I can’t be your crutch anymore, but— I have things I need to piece through too, Jaehwan, just like you did. I'm only realizing it now. I know it isn’t fair to put this on you, but it wasn’t fair of you to put your issues on me either, and— if I helped you, you need to help me heal my wounds too.”  
  
“Your wounds?” Jaehwan asked, a bit confused. He knew he’d hurt Sanghyuk, he felt too much guilt over it to forget it, but he would have thought that being away from him, the events in the past, Sanghyuk would be able to, well, to forget _him_. Or at least tuck it all away.   
  
Sanghyuk was the one who could walk away, he wasn’t in love. Jaehwan couldn’t.   
  
Sanghyuk gestured around at them, at the room in all its cluttered splendor. “Do you remember being in here with me?” he asked, and it hurt, because yes, Jaehwan did remember. There was no corner of this house that Sanghyuk hadn’t tainted, no safe haven for Jaehwan. “Do you remember laughing, do you remember hurting yourself, do you remember—” He’d begun to speak fervently, and he cut himself off, stepping forward sharply and reaching out as if to touch Jaehwan, who froze. Sanghyuk stopped before they made contact, his palm hovering over Jaehwan’s forearm, where Jaehwan had sliced himself open, where Sanghyuk had pressed his hand, so long ago.   
  
Jaehwan couldn’t hold in the whimper that escaped him. Sanghyuk was so close and Jaehwan could feel the warmth of his hand even if they weren’t quite touching.  
  
Sanghyuk was whispering, the softest of sounds. “We had a moment, then.” He paused and then added, “We had a lot of moments. Soft, intimate moments. Before things went bad.”  
  
Just as quietly, Jaehwan murmured, “I remember.” He went over those memories sometimes, both hating himself for it and yet unable to forget them, even if he wanted to.  
  
Sanghyuk had been staring down at his own hand where it was almost touching Jaehwan, but then he looked up, meeting Jaehwan’s gaze, and from so close, it felt as if Jaehwan was being laid bare. “You ruined them,” Sanghyuk said softly, and Jaehwan flinched. “Every time we got close, every time I— I _tried_ , Jaehwan. And every time you raked claws over me and shoved me away.”  
  
Jaehwan felt his mouth twisting, wholly out of his own volition. “I know, Sanghyuk,” he said, maybe a bit too harshly. “I know. Why are you telling me this? I am already aware.”  
  
Sanghyuk shook his head. “You know you fucked up, but you dont— you dont understand how hard I always tried. You don’t seem to understand how much it hurt every time. It still hurts.”  
  
Sanghyuk was right, Jaehwan didn’t fully understand, not when Sanghyuk didn’t love him. But Sanghyuk had been soft then, still had some softness in him now. It seemed fantastical to him, that the memories Jaehwan looked back on in pain, Sanghyuk also felt hurt over, also looked back on and— regretted, maybe.  
  
But where Jaehwan regretted ruining them, Sanghyuk most likely regretted letting them happen at all. And that tore at Jaehwan, because after Sanghyuk died, those were the memories Jaehwan himself was going to be thinking of when he put the silver dagger into his own chest.  
  
Sanghyuk was staring at him, and Jaehwan didn’t know what to say, what he could say. “I’m sorry, Sanghyuk,” he whispered in the end. “I’ll say it a thousand times, though I know that won’t help. I don’t know what will.”  
  
Sanghyuk shook his head and dropped his gaze, and Jaehwan felt like he could breathe again. “I don’t think I do either,” he muttered. “Like I said I’m just trying to piece through everything too. It's— hard, because we had those moments, and I keep remembering them and they hurt. We were good at the start.”  
  
“Before I fell in love,” Jaehwan murmured, knowing he fucked this up, by being weak, by being a fool.   
  
Sanghyuk shook his head again, a bit fervently this time. “No, no that isn’t what I meant,” he said, and then looked frustrated, biting on his bottom lip, like he didn’t want to say something. After several moments he apparently decided to change tack a bit and said, “You gave your music up, gave up friends and family— but Jaehwan, you gave me up too. We didn’t talk about that.”  
  
“It was— was a bit obvious, I felt,” Jaehwan said, somewhat numbly. “I didn’t see the point of it.”   
  
“The point is— at the start you— you had me, Jaehwan. You had me and you threw me away and I'm only now realizing the damage that did to me, too. I let you in more than I should have.”  
  
“Oh,” Jaehwan said softly, feeling the guilt rushing back, remembering what Sanghyuk was like, back then. “You were very soft at the start, very sweet, I— I knew I was hurting you, to a degree, and that was the point. I thought if I made sure you stayed at a distance then my own feelings would follow. I did not think— I did not think it would cut you that deeply.”  
  
Sanghyuk huffed out a little sigh. “No, you don’t seem to realize the amount of power you have over the people in your life.”  
  
“I know I did damage,” Jaehwan whispered. “I know I changed you. I'm sorry. I regret it more than you know.”  
  
Sanghyuk stepped back, stepped away, looking at the various artifacts along the wall. “When exactly did you fall in love with me, Jaehwan? How long has it actually been?”  
  
Jaehwan didn’t know how to answer that, because there hadn’t been a specific moment. It had happened with relative quickness, yes, but it still took some time, and he wasn’t sure exactly when it had begun. Perhaps it had been the very moment Jaehwan had first set eyes on him.  
  
“I don’t know,” Jaehwan said softly. “I— I already felt some fondness for you before we’d even slept together that second time, but it wasn’t until after that did I realize exactly how fucked I was. You’d— you’d convinced me to roll around in your bed, and I knew I was in trouble because dawn was coming and I didn’t want to leave, wanted to stay next to you, staring at your stupid, snoring face.” He let his gaze drift over Sanghyuk’s features, noting the changes. “You had less jawline back then, you were cuter.” That made Sanghyuk glare at him but Jaehwan paid no mind, soothing him by adding, “I wanted you so badly, even just that second time, I should have known that it was going to be a problem.”  
  
Sanghyuk huffed out a breath, seeming frustrated, but whatever he was thinking he kept to himself, pressing his lips together and fisting his hands at his sides.   
  
Jaehwan could guess well enough what his thoughts were. “I’m sorry,” he said again, for the hundredth time. Sanghyuk wasn’t looking at him, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. “I thought I could handle it. I thought I knew what I was doing, and now here we are.”  
  
Sanghyuk seemed to shake himself, drawing back into the moment before his shoulders slumped a little. “Yeah,” he sighed, “here we are.”  
  
It seemed like he’d deflated, and had nothing more to say. Jaehwan wished he knew how to comfort him. “Why did you come, Sanghyuk? Surely you knew— knew I’d be useless.”  
  
“I’d hoped talking to you would—” Sanghyuk began, then he snapped his mouth shut. “I don’t know. I just want closure, Jaehwan. But I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have come. I knew it would hurt you.”  
  
Jaehwan smiled, almost all affectation. “It does, but I think I am a masochist at heart, because I’m still glad I got to see you,” he said, and hated how true it was. Being near Sanghyuk was agony, but he lived to see him, to hear his voice.   
  
Sanghyuk was biting his bottom lip hard, and he’d cut into it, Jaehwan could smell the blood. “I hate how alike we are sometimes,” Sanghyuk whispered, and then he was turning away. “I shouldn’t have come, I’m— I’m sorry. You said your goodbyes to me, and it isn’t fair of me to— it won’t happen again.” He left before Jaehwan could speak, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the room. It felt like deja vu.   
  
Jaehwan didn’t move for several long moments, taking stock of himself. He should, perhaps, go rejoin the others, but he did not have it in him. He needed to lick his wounds, as he always did lately, after an encounter with Sanghyuk. The idea that Sanghyuk was going home to do the same made Jaehwan feel utterly wretched.   
  
Once he felt he could move without coming apart, Jaehwan left the room, closing the door behind him and then stilling. He could sense someone nearby, and he heard no heartbeat, Sanghyuk’s footsteps having long since faded. Taekwoon was not the sort to snoop, and Wonshik and Hongbin knew better.  
  
“Hakyeon,” Jaehwan said into the darkness, “I can sense you lurking. Do show yourself, because if I have to drag you out of hiding, it will be a most unpleasant experience.” Movement to Jaehwan’s left, and then Hakyeon was there, that ever present pinched look on his face. “Were you never house trained? It’s rude to eavesdrop, you know.”  
  
Hakyeon breathed out in a huff, his nostrils flaring as he stared levelly at Jaehwan. He looked like he had a multitude of things to say and was debating on the wisdom of letting the words go.  
  
“Come, don’t be shy,” Jaehwan said softly. “You’ve never been thus in the past. I wish to retire to my room, so do get your interference over with quickly.”  
  
“Sanghyuk told me you’ve been talking about your— issues,” Hakyeon murmured, speaking slowly despite Jaehwan’s request. It was as if he was taking great care to pick the correct words. “You said you were going to try to fix them, fix yourself. Do you think you can?”  
  
Jaehwan narrowed his eyes, suspicious. He wasn’t sure what Hakyeon’s game was. Perhaps he was here to inform Jaehwan he was an irreparable ass, and his efforts were futile. “I am trying, yes, to wade through three centuries of my own bullshit. I am trying to remember who I was, at the beginning, before I was tainted so badly,” Jaehwan said. Hakyeon didn’t deserve an explanation, but Jaehwan was trying, trying with everyone, to be as honest as possible.   
  
Hakyeon was frowning. “Yes, but— can you actually _do_ it? Can you be like you were before? Can you— treat him as you did at the start, but without all the— the sharpness that drove him away?” he asked softly. “Can you do it?”  
  
Now Jaehwan was truly confused. “I already told you I am trying. We cannot— we cannot be as we were, we lack the trust and intimacy, and we shall never have it again. But I am making an effort to alter my behavior so I don’t cause any more damage, to anyone, but especially Sanghyuk. I’ve hurt him enough, as you’ve so kindly pointed out in the past.”   
  
Suddenly Jaehwan found himself laughing without humor, remembering who he was speaking to. Expecting Hakyeon to have sympathy for his situation was like expecting the sun to rise in the west. And the worst part was Jaehwan could not blame him. Hakyeon loved Sanghyuk, for which Jaehwan had no fault with, and he had watched as Jaehwan sucked the life from Sanghyuk. If he were Hakyeon, he would probably hate himself as well. He already hated himself.  
  
Hakyeon watched him with eyes hard as flint, calculating. Sometimes when he was talking of knitting patterns it was easy to forget that he’d been a ruthless hunter, but in moments like this, it shone through.  
  
“Why are you asking me these questions, Hakyeon?” Jaehwan asked, a twisted mockery of a smile still on his face. “You can’t expect me to believe you’re wanting me to recover and for him and I to reconcile. You nearly staked me, once, and I know you think Sanghyuk should have let you, I'm sure.”  
  
Hakyeon was just _staring_ at Jaehwan and he was beginning to feel unnerved. “I was trying to protect him, because I knew you were going to ruin him.”  
  
That made Jaehwan wince. “Yes,” he said, upper lip curling, “you're always right. I hurt him and he hates me now, as it should be. As you wanted it to be.”  
  
“He doesn’t hate you,” Hakyeon ground out, his hands curling into fists at his side, like that was painful for him to say. “He keeps coming around because he doesn’t hate you. I wish he hated you, maybe if he did he wouldn’t be suffering so much, but as it is you've dug your claws into him and he can’t move on. He cares about you.”  
  
Jaehwan stiffened. _He cares about you_. It wasn’t news per se, Sanghyuk had said it himself, but Jaehwan wasn’t sure if he believed it, if Sanghyuk truly cared or if he just was a bleeding heart for any pitiful creature that crossed his path. And Jaehwan was so pitiful, he knew. Perhaps Sanghyuk did care marginally, but not enough. Not enough. And Jaehwan didn’t feel like standing here for Hakyeon to twist this particular knife.   
  
“I do not wish to have this conversation,” Jaehwan said, stepping back. “You needn’t concern yourself, Hakyeon. We are trying to part, permanently, and Sanghyuk might care about me but he cares about everyone, he is that sort, it is not specific to me—”   
  
Hakyeon was in his path, faster than a blink, blocking his escape. “For fuck’s sake, Jaehwan,” he spat, fangs slipping out a little, “can you pull your head out of your ass for ten fucking minutes and stop wallowing in your own self-caused misery to look around and acknowledge the damage you’ve caused and still are causing?”   
  
Jaehwan reeled back, confused and tired and hurting. “How am i still causing damage?” he cried, wondering how, how he could still be fucking up, somehow, “I’ve been trying so hard, I don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have.”  
  
“But you are,” Hakyeon said, and Jaehwan wanted to shake him.  
  
“How the fuck do you know?” Jaehwan asked nastily, trying to preserve himself somehow. “You know _nothing_ of us behind closed doors—”  
  
“I know enough,” Hakyeon hissed. He was very near Jaehwan, glaring up at him through his bangs. “He's sobbed in my arms over it, over you, over the way you treated him when all he ever offered you was kindness. It’s like he said, he gave you pieces of himself, and even now, he is still giving you pieces of himself.”  
  
Jaehwan felt so lost, horribly on the verge of tears. What pieces? God, where was he going so wrong. “I don’t understand—”  
  
Hakyeon’s face twisted, and he seemed to steel himself. “He almost fell in love with you,” he said.  
  
Jaehwan gasped softly, a whispered, “No,” escaping his lips, but Hakyeon was continuing, apparently having decided that if he was going to destroy Jaehwan then he was going to be thorough.   
  
“He almost fell in love with you and he can’t fucking take that piece back,” Hakyeon said, and Jaehwan heard him as if from very far off. “And I wish I could tear it out of you and give it back to him, because you’ve ruined him for anyone else. He’ll never be able to love another, you broke his spirit too badly.”  
  
Hakyeon appeared to be finished, and Jaehwan was glad of it, for he wasn’t sure he could survive any more. That rough, raw feeling was back, like his insides had been scraped out harshly and left him empty. “Why are you telling me this,” he asked, the barest of whispers.  
  
A spasm crossed over Hakyeon’s face, but whatever he had to say to that, he swallowed it down, shaking his head and turning away.  
  
“You cannot lay that upon me and then just fucking walk away,” Jaehwan said, voice rising in mild hysteria. He might have grabbed Hakyeon’s wrist, forced the rest out of him, but he knew Taekwoon wouldn’t forgive him for it. So he watched Hakyeon walk away, listened to his footsteps fade off.   
  
Jaehwan stumbled back, leaning against the wall. He touched trembling fingers to the wallpaper, trying to steady himself, trying to stave off the break he could feel coming.  
  
“Oh, Sanghyuk,” he whispered, thinking of Sanghyuk two years ago, the soft, sweet little thing he was. The memory of him then, looking to Jaehwan, trying to reach out and being coldly, cruelly, tossed aside— Jaehwan sobbed. He _remembered_ doing it, throwing Sanghyuk’s efforts back into his face, to hurt him as a lesson, teaching him to be as cold and hard as Jaehwan had thought himself to be.  
  
Jaehwan hated himself for ruining this in ways he hadn’t even realized.  
  
Sanghyuk could have loved him. He almost did.   
  
——  
  
It had been a while, since Sanghyuk had last screamed at anyone. With the way his mood had been recently, he might have found it therapeutic, were he not so fucking furious.  
  
“You told Jaehwan _what_?” he shouted at Hakyeon, who winced, like he was apologetic. Sanghyuk knew he was anything but.   
  
“I didn’t tell him anything more current,” Hakyeon said, picking at the lint on Sanghyuk’s couch cushions. When he’d come by he’d seemed guilty, but Sanghyuk hadn’t expected _this_. “I felt he needed to know exactly how much he did wrong, and how. So he won’t make the same mistakes again.”  
  
Sanghyuk wanted to shake him. “He already knows!” he shouted. “He knows because he loves me and wants me to love him back and I don’t. And he’s already aware it is his fucking fault. You’re just twisting the knife in him at this point. Fuck.” Sanghyuk turned away, running a hand through his hair roughly. How much would this have set Jaehwan back, he wondered, would he have had another break? Would all their work over the past month have just gotten nullified because Hakyeon had a fucking condition and couldn’t mind his own fucking business?  
  
The thought of Jaehwan having to grieve everything all over again made Sanghyuk want to cry.   
  
“He knows he did wrong, yes, but he still has trouble grasping how, and where, and why, and part of that is because he was in denial himself at the time, but part of it is that you’ve also not been fully honest with him about everything, Sanghyuk,” Hakyeon said through gritted teeth, clearly trying not to have this devolve into a shouting match.  
  
“Sometimes,” Sanghyuk said, trying to lower his voice, “I regret confiding in you. You had no right to tell him when you knew I didn’t want him to know that I— I could have— I did not tell him for a _reason_ , Hakyeon.”  
  
“What reason is that?” Hakyeon asked softly. He was still sitting down, his posture forcefully casual, while Sanghyuk loomed over him, fists clenched by his sides.  
  
“I didn’t want to hurt him with things that could, but did not, happen, and I didn’t want to give him false hope for the present,” Sanghyuk said. He found he was breathing a bit heavily.   
  
“Is it really false hope, though,” Hakyeon whispered, looking right into Sanghyuk’s eyes, and oh, Sanghyuk finally understood what this was about.  
  
“You never could mind your own business, could you,” Sanghyuk said lowly. He paced away, to the window, staring out onto the darkened street. Both the house wards and his own tattoos were quiet, aside from the general prickling Hakyeon’s existence caused. He tried to focus on that, to calm himself down.   
  
“You went to see him to dredge it all back up,” Hakyeon was saying, “you’re bringing back that time frame because you’re reliving it, Sanghyuk.”  
  
“I’m trying to make sense of things,” Sanghyuk whispered, wishing Hakyeon would stop.   
  
His silent plea went unheard. “You’re fighting not to fall in love,” Hakyeon replied, then sighed heavily. “I knew this would happen.”  
  
And there went the calm Sanghyuk had been trying to pull around himself. He whirled, snarling. “Yeah, and you fucking sent me back in there anyway.” He made a short, sharp gesture towards the window. “You do not get to catalyze something and then turn around and fucking say I told you so. _You_ sent me back in, you did, and I can feel him sinking in through my cracks, like I knew he would, like you knew he would, but you still came here and asked me to go to him.”  
  
Hakyeon flinched, and Sanghyuk felt a slight thrill of vicious victory over it. “I didn’t know what else to do, none of us did,” Hakyeon said, and Sanghyuk knew that well enough already. He wouldn’t have minded as much, truly, even if it had caused him suffering, but Hakyeon sitting there and having the gall to hold this against him made it far more upsetting. They hadn’t had a choice, so why was Hakyeon so set on blaming Sanghyuk for this.  
  
It was, possibly, because none of this would have happened if Sanghyuk hadn’t yielded to Jaehwan in the first place two years ago. But if they were going to bring this back full circle Sanghyuk could just as easily pin this on Hakyeon. It was, in the end, Hakyeon’s fault he’d been exposed to Jaehwan at all. And if Sanghyuk wasn’t holding that against him then Hakyeon had no fucking right to hold Sanghyuk’s involuntary feelings against him. It was fucking hypocritical, when Hakyeon had made decisions as bad, as horrifying, as destructive, and he didn’t regret them nearly as much as he seemed to want Sanghyuk to regret Jaehwan.  
  
“You need to leave,” Sanghyuk murmured, not looking at Hakyeon. He was too angry, he didn’t want to say something he’d later regret.   
  
“Sanghyuk,” Hakyeon said softly. “I’m just worried about you. I don’t want him to hurt you any more than he already has and if you fall for him—”  
  
“Hakyeon. I love you. But get out of my house,” Sanghyuk said sharply.   
  
He heard the sound of Hakyeon getting to his feet. “If you fall for him, I want him to have changed into someone who deserves you,” he whispered, and then he was gone. Sanghyuk didn’t hear his footsteps, but he heard the very soft sound of the door closing.   
  
Sanghyuk didn’t know what to do with himself. He knew Hakyeon revealing this to Jaehwan would have had some kind of impact, but how extreme of one, Sanghyuk did not know. And he didn’t think he could find out. They’d said their goodbyes and it was wholly possible Jaehwan did not want to see him even despite this. But it was also possible he did. And Sanghyuk wanted to make sure he was alright, wasn’t suffering all the more for this.   
  
He wanted, but he would not do it. For both their sakes, he would not.   
  
Sanghyuk stood in the middle of his living room for a long time, holding his own upper arms, and tried not to think of how when Hakyeon had said, _if you fall for him_ , it had sounded a lot like, _when you fall for him_.


End file.
